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“Maddie, I can’t do it anymore, please don’t leave me in this house,” he whispers, tears catching on his lashes. She sighs over the phone before she speaks. Her voice cuts through his sobs. “Buck, I’m sorry. You know how I felt in there, trapped–”
Buck cuts her off with a wet scoff. “Oh, because you’re the only one who had to dress up every Wednesday night? Every Sunday morning?” he says scornfully. It’s quiet over the receiver.
She exhales. “No, that’s not what I’m saying, Evan. I’m saying that I can’t help you. I’m six hours away, and Doug would never let me go to Pennsylvania. Not without him, at least.”
“Oh,” he breathes. “So you’re going to leave me here.”
Maddie is quick to defend herself, shifting on her end before he hears the TV pause in the background. “No. I’ll get you out of there. I just don’t know when .”
Buck wills himself not to cry again. Curly blonde hair falls onto his cheeks. “He wants me to cut my hair again,” he whispers. “I don’t want to cut my hair.”
“Run, Buck. I can’t stand you there. You’re 17, I’ll send you money and we’ll figure this out–”
“Evan?” his mother calls quietly, voice caught in the wind behind him on the porch.
Buck breathes out. “Maddie, I have to go.” He hears her affirm, tinny promises whispering around his ear before he hangs up.
“Mom?”
She sits down beside him, shivering in the cold and wrapping an arm around his shoulders. “I heard what you were saying to Madelyn,” she says lowly. When he looks at her, her face is illuminated by the street light hanging over the end of their driveway. She looks haunted and beautiful under the orange glow.
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs quietly. She hums in response before shuffling closer to him. “I have a car packed in the neighbor’s house. I know you noticed some of your clothes missing.”
He startles, mouth parting in shock. “What?”
She squeezes him. “Graduation is in a month, and then we’re leaving,” she says. He is frozen beside her, half from the cold and the other half from disbelief.
“It’s almost over?”
“We’re in the final sprint.”
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He shuts the trunk with great care, giving his mother a passing glance as she dips a careful hand into her pocket, pulling out the cross necklace that used to sit between his father’s collarbones before he closed the clasp around his mother’s neck. She presses her lips to the silver in a silent prayer, eyes raising to the clouds before she slides it into her purse. Her gaze finds him.
“Do you have everything?” she asks, voice hushed. Buck nods fervently.
Pennsylvania weather has always been cloudy, rain drops tipping over the edges of stormy clouds and sinking into the pavement. Soft wind caresses his cheek and cold, damp air winds its way over his knuckles and tapping his nose. He bundles further into his coat–red fabric that has almost been torn to rags with how much he wears it–and takes another look at the gray Jeep that is shining in the neighbor’s driveway.
“I have my wallet and my license,” Buck responds, tongue in cheek.
She levels him with a look. “You look like you forgot something.”
His face drops into a sheepish smile. “I– Ah, maybe I did forget my bear.”
“Go on,” she shoos, pushing him towards the house. “Go get it. You’re lucky your father just left for his trip.”
He runs.
Once he gets back, out of breath and ready to leave, she’s already in the driver’s seat. A pale hand is resting on the parking brake when he slides into the passenger’s side.
“Be careful out there,” says their neighbor, waving politely. She’s smiling like she’s the one leaving, while her husband has his hand resting on her waist. Buck meets his eyes.. The man’s eyes are solemn, like he knows it isn’t over yet. Like they’re not in the clear, but toeing the line.
“Take care of yourself, son,” he says.
Buck nods as his mother reverses into the road. He watches his house get smaller in the distance, becoming a dot that’s hard to see through the fog. His mother takes her hand off of the wheel and she wraps her fingers around his wrist gently. So unlike Phillip Buckley, he thinks. He wonders how they were in love once upon a time.
Maybe when his father’s eyes were kinder. Maybe when his hands weren’t so calloused from how many times he’s buckled a fancy belt for a meeting. Maybe when he still looked at his children with love and not scorn.
The sun breaks through the clouds.
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He walks into Station 118 with a smile on his face. His steps are confident, skipping up the stairs to the loft even though his heart is beating out of his chest. Evan ‘Buck’ Buckley wears his soul on his sleeve and his heart on his cheek. He doesn’t hide it away like he used to, shying away from touch and shoving everything he feels deep inside of his ribcage.
He doesn’t take the firetruck out for daily hookups. He drives them outside and scrubs them clean like he would with his father’s floors.
He doesn’t hate the teenager that shoved her newborn baby down the toilet. Doesn’t lift the ax into the air and try to slice it into the wall. He holds the baby close to his chest and looks down at his closed eyes with his mother’s love.
Chimney watches him slip into the engine carefully, looking thoughtful. He shares a glance with Hen, lips forming around a silent question. Was he always like this?
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He doesn’t cry when he finds Maddie in the shower of his ex-girlfriend's apartment. He holds her close to his chest and kisses the crown of her scalp with care. He listens when she mentions Doug, eyes softening.
“So you didn’t leave me there?” he breathes, feeling an old, aching wound in his heart stitch together and mend. She raises her head to look him in the eyes, like an older sister should. She grabs his hands and presses them to an old bruise that wraps around her knee like a fading tattoo.
“I would never ,” she answers, and he believes her. She hesitates, and then rubs her thumb across his cheekbone thoughtfully.
“What?” asks Buck.
“You have Mom’s eyes.”
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He doesn’t cry when his mother sits at his bedside, after the ladder truck and informs him that Phillip Buckley has passed away in a tragic car accident and the members from their old congregation are asking them to attend the funeral.
He smiles. His eyes water, but he doesn’t cry, just like his father wouldn’t have. Instead, he tucks his mother’s hand in his own and presses it to his lips in a silent prayer.
“He’s gone?” he asks quietly. He feels 17 again, too long limbs flailing around him awkwardly and his knees painfully weak. She dips her head silently to affirm, tears shining in her eyes.
Bobby watches from the window outside of Buck’s hospital room. He looks to the cast that is wrapped tightly around his coworker’s leg and then to the growing smile on his face. He is deep in thought, lips forming around a silent question.
Have I ever see him this happy?
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He doesn’t cry when he loses Christopher in the waves. Instead, he presses his lips to the cross that his father used to wear and dives in right after him.
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Buck doesn’t cry when he collapses outside of the field hospital, Hen’s firm grip around his upper arm steadying him as he slides to the ground and meets Eddie’s eyes. Thank you , they say, and they speak to him louder than any scripture has ever before.
He doesn’t cry when he realizes he’s in love, but he does cry when his mother wraps her arms around him when he tells her that he’s in love with a man.
“Your father might be disappointed, but I’m not. I’m proud ,” she says. “I love you no matter who you’re in love with.”
He chokes on a heavy sob, trembling and leaning into his mom’s arms. She rubs a comforting hand along the small of his back. He falls apart in the safest place he could be.
“He may be looking up at you from Hell, but I’m sure that the only thing you need is me.”
Buck doesn’t cry when Eddie’s lip happen to slot into his, but his lover’s tears have never tasted so sweet.